Numb
by EternalOphelia
Summary: [oneshot] After the war, Hermione can't feel emotion anymore. Not even loss. Until the past comes back to her. RR!


Numb

Hermione Granger was crying. Again. Not because she was sad. Or angry. Or hurt. She was crying because she was so completely numb she couldn't feel a thing.

It was snowing again. The fireplace lay unused as Hermione sat, knees crushed against her chest, in her window box, staring blindly at the snow drifts outside. She didn't feel cold. She didn't feel at all anymore. She wondered, from time to time, what it would be like to have emotions again, real ones. It had been so long that she had forgotten what they were like. Smiling was a cruel myth, like laughing, a cynical joke. Anger was a dream, a desire. And love, love was buried under so many layers of hate and doubt and punishment that she doubted she'd ever be able to uncover it again.

The date was January 13th and three years ago she'd been at war. And though that war had long since ended with the fall of Voldemort and so many others, she relived it day after day, a sick reel of images on repeat looping through her mind. Harry was dead. Ron was dead. Her parents were dead. Ginny was still in a coma. Fred lost the ability to walk, but not the ability to laugh when the right time came. George lost an eye and part of his right ear and can't lay flat on his back because, if he did, his lungs would give out and he'd suffocate. Neville was dead, as of three months ago, dying in his sleep from war injuries. His widow, Luna Lovegood, doesn't smile anymore. Doesn't talk. She's as much alive as Hermione. The list was endless and if Hermione stopped to think about her losses, she'd shatter.

For three months—two years ago—Hermione had been able to smile. To laugh and love. She'd been desperately and painfully in love with a man who, against his will, loved her back. But didn't love her enough, apparently, to stay with her. Hissing some choice insults at her, he'd stormed from her flat, vowing to hate her again if it was the last thing he did.

She punched a mirror and nearly broke her hand the day he left. She cried for six hours straight, didn't eat for weeks, and prayed to just get over him. A short while after that she turned to stone, the girl she is now, staring out the window at the snow, not really thinking, not really living.

She taught herself to forget him and, slowly, she forgot everyone else too. She awoke every morning and went to work, then came home—sometimes having dinner, sometimes not—then sat in the window box and wasted the night away. She didn't even read anymore; her books were a sad sight, covered in dust. She didn't even miss them.

Sometimes, when she was in the bath or sitting by the window, she wondered why she wasn't dead yet. Why she continued on this earth when she had nothing to offer it and vice versa. She was alone and numb and so tired of pretending to live.

The clock struck midnight and, glancing at it, she had a flashback to earlier that morning. He'd come to the Ministry of Magic to see the Minister and their paths had crossed. He didn't even look at her. She thought he could have walked right through her and, for an instant, it made her feel again. Feel lonely and cold and sort of sad. And then she went about her day, not thinking about him, because she'd learned to forget. She wondered if she still loved him or, if like everything else, that had left her too. If she loved him, then surely she would have felt something more when she saw him after not seeing him for so long.

Did he think of her anymore? Did he hate her again, like he wanted to? Did she hate him too, for leaving her? For breaking her? For turning her into a block of ice that only slightly resembled Hermione Granger?

Drawing in a deep breath, Hermione got up from the window box and sat on her sofa, grabbing the first book on the coffee table before her. The spine creaked with age and under-use. The dust almost made her cough.

She went to bed at four in the morning when she finished the book.

He was at work again the next day, still ignoring her, and she him. She threw up in the bathroom after lunch and went home sick with food poisoning. She ate good food, food she hadn't thought about in years, then read another book.

Two months later she smiled for the first time at a joke Fred told when she was at dinner at the Weasley's. No one said anything, and she didn't even notice. She didn't feel different, didn't feel like she was changing. Somewhere in the back of her head she had to know that she only read or smiled or did something other than sit in her window box the days he came to the Ministry, even if only to ignore her and prove he was over her.

On July 31st, Hermione went to the cemetery and put flowers on Harry's grave. She kissed her fingertips and touched the stone, warmed by the light of the sun. She thought it would be appropriate to cry, so she did, but she felt nothing.

On August 15th, she went on a date with a man three years older than her. He worked at the Ministry too and his name was Jason Corman. He was nice and smelled like shaving cream; Hermione liked the smell of shaving cream. His light brown hair was long and his green eyes reminded her of Harry. They ate at a nice restaurant, drank good wine, and talked about nothing she would remember the next day. They slept together but when he asked her out again she declined.

She sat by her window and stared outside at the small birch tree _he_ had planted for her randomly one day so long ago. She did this for months again. The only time she left the house was for work and once when George came by and demanded her presence at The Burrow. She gotten drunk and yelled at Charlie that she hated the stupid tree in her front yard. No one knew what she meant, so she went home and chopped it down. Then burned the remains. Then she wished she hadn't and went out and bought another tree. But she couldn't bring herself to plant it.

It was spring the day she looked out the window and realized the tree was planted.

She went outside in her bare feet, her simple blue dress clinging to her in the wind. She asked the tree why it had to torment her, then tore off a branch and started to cry. She cried so hard and for so long that she made herself sick. It was only after the sun had set, with her still crying on the lawn, that she realized she was sad, that she could feel sadness, and it made her cry harder, and then laugh.

"Ok," she breathed, closing her eyes. "I'll love you."

"Good," came a hard voice from behind her. She didn't open her eyes, didn't dare to look back. "Because I failed miserably at hating you."

His arms were around her, from behind, before she knew it. He was on his knees, just hugging her, his face in her hair.

"Are you going to leave me again?" she whispered.

"I can't if you don't take me back," he pointed out.

She said that if they didn't say they were together then he couldn't leave her. He laughed and kissed her ear. She still didn't open her eyes and said, "I should hate you."

"It's harder than it seems."

She turned around in his embrace and looked into his icy gray eyes. His hair was shorter than she remembered.

"I love you, Draco."

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